Best of (My) Cohost
At time of writing (late on 30 September 2024) Cohost is shutting down, immanently. I have mixed feelings about that site, but I’m glad it existed if only for the longer posts some people made. I especially like that many people are revitalising their blogs (or making new ones) in preparation - this is definitely part of why I’m posting a bit more myself.
I didn’t think I had anything worth keeping on Cohost, and anyway it will stick around on the wayback machine if nowhere else, but I took a look through my old posts and there are a few things I have a certain fondness for and can put here. I was never a huge poster there, I preferred to read everyone else’s stuff. I’ve organised this page by topic and then by date posted.
All date/times in this little exhibit are in “.beats”, i.e. decimal time at UTC+1. Look it up. I’ve only copied the .webp version of the various images to keep the size down (lets not restart that discourse, truly Cohost was the only general-purpose social media website that could argue about image formats); follow the links to track down the originals if you must. Typos are preserve intact. I may restyle this page at some point but probably not.
Dwarf Fortress
I got back into DF in late 2022 in the run up to the steam version, and in fact I played a lot more in that period than I have since (I’ve been waiting for better keyboard support before I try and override my old muscle memory).
Respectbanner is going really well
Just started year 9 and I can just sally out, functioning marksdwarf squad and all, and flatten any goblin siege that shows up. I lost about 6 dwarfs to this one vs 50+ goblins, one a hunter caught outdoors and one a gate guard that was in the wrong place when the drawbridge went up (oops). Meanwhile I’m having a fairly successful raiding career, thinking about targeting some elves next.
The life and times of Smunstu ‘Vampy’ Wraithamuses
With DF 0.50.01/‘the steam release’ immanent my fort of Respectbanner is heading towards retirement, and I went to look up it’s first vampire in legends mode. She went under the name of Doren Laborlong in my fort but, due to the way the game works, gets to have my nickname of “Vampy” (thanks So I’m a Spider So What, I’m indebted to you) attached even to her real name of Smunstu Wraithamuses.
I was very amused to discover that she:
- Had already murdered two people before she was made a vampire
- Profaned a place already called Bluntedprofane (what did you want her to do?) which
- was actually a Dark Fortress so I don’t know how you even do that, and
- is listed as participating in various defences of the fort against seiges despite very much being chained up in the basement, insane, behind stone walls at the time
I expected this to happen but it still fascinates me
I’ve been playing this new dwarf fortress version way more zoomed in. The first image is about the zoom level I’d play classic at, but the second is how I’ve actually been playing. Part of it is that I want to see the sprites, but it’s also just so busy at further zoom levels.
One of the consequences is that my workshop rooms and taverns are way smaller now. I wonder how it will change again once I can switch back and forwards…
Classic is here! Praise the miners!
Our long graphical nightmare is over
Believe / Doubt
Photos
Cohost had a great photography scene, primarily because it didn’t crunch pictures like other websites. I… was never in their league, not just because of my ancient equipment.
Not sure where this sprung into my mind from but
Speed. Reliability. Meerkats
I love that my main camera at the moment is second hand and ~15 years old
I hate that it almost, but not quite, produces ok pictures in overcast weather
One of these sparrows is not like the others
I went to the zoo this morning, but as usual I couldn’t help but take a few pictures of the free wildlife that also inhabit the area.
Taken with my old EOS 400D at ISO 100. I also got some meerkats on film but it will be a while before I can develop those.
Pirate Queen Odette
Well, winter indoor clothes-drying queen anyway
Winner in our hearts
Got me some photos back
Kodak Gold 200
Other videogames
All of these are old games; I guess that’s my pattern.
Sleep with the fishes
I never had the full version of this as a kid, but I found it on archive.org. I used lutris to install it on wine, which was a bit janky but it worked in the end. Well worth it imo
Nostalgia.sc3
I see all this Sim City 2000 love on the internet and sometimes I wonder if I was the only person who had (and only had) Sim City 3000
After work Videojames
Everyone I know seems to have nostalgia for Sim City 2000. Did nobody else grow up with SC3?
TIL those archive.org DOSBox things are persistently stored in your cache
I’m thinking about using this for teaching people some stuff at work, by divorcing the reasoning about bug finding from the language and concepts they are familiar with
What are you trying to tell me Nethack??
Regrettably, I have no Zorkmids
Videogames I am extremely mediocre at, a series
Roller Coaster Tycoon
Misc
I made other posts too.
I’ve belatedly come to the realisation that I don’t like i3wm for it’s tiling aspect
It’s taken like 5+ years but I’ve decided I like it for three reasons: it’s speed, it’s keyboard focus (which I could probably emulate in any wm if I just took the time) and it’s handling of virtual workspaces.
In the blurry pic above I’ve got a screenshot of the taskbar interface of the workspace switcher in xfce4. In my setup I have a 1080p monitor on the left and an old 1280x1024 monitor on the right which I will get around to replacing someday but which is still actually pretty handy sometimes. With most workspace systems I’ve encountered, such as the xfce one I’m using here, the workspace on the left screen is permanently tied to the workspace on the right: switch from workspace 1 to 2 on the left screen and the right must do the same thing, because they’re one big thing.
What I can do with i3, and which I have yet to find anywhere else (but which must exist, surely?) is that I can move them completely independently, and even chuck entire workspaces from one screen to the other like it’s nothing (not that every app likes being suddenly forced into standard definition, but that’s not my problem). I don’t know why this is my killer feature, but it has really turned in to one.
In contrast I basically never tile my windows, I just switch rapidly back and forwards between them. If I want to tile something it’s basically always terminal stuff and I can do that in tmux which is where I have them anyway. If anything the tiling is a disadvantage because many games don’t react well to it, which is why I also have xfce installed on this machine.
So question: does anyone know of a ‘normal’ linux window manager (especially, say, some settings I can just tweak in xfce4) which handles workspaces like this? Or is that inherently a non-normal thing to want?
I listen to the Homestuck music from time to time
I never finished Homestuck - I fell off after one of the last Hiatuses and never got back into it - and I remember almost none of the setting, plot, or characters.1 I also don’t know any of the context around the music in particular, I just have the digital download from bandcamp in my media files. What’s original? How was it made? I don’t even know enough about music in general to answer those questions
As such I just have this Thing in my life, almost entirely devoid of its original context and purpose, like medieval Romans repurposing the Colosseum as a fort. I listen when I want a certain kind of music in the background, and incidentally it triggers a desire to remember and maybe even reread.
Maybe next year…
- I only remember fragments of that period in general, as it was very late in the Before Times. But that’s another story
According to OpenStreetMap
…there is a 1020m mountain rising from the bay east of the Greenland capital of Nuuk.
How did I happen to be looking at a cyclist-centric rendering of a map of the world’s most northerly capital? Well first I was thinking about how Polaris is closer to being the true ‘north star’ than it ever has before, and then I was thinking about how the north magnetic pole is closest to true north than it has ever been in recorded history, and then I poked around on Wikipedia for a while to see if what I remembered was true, and then I was poking around on OSM and google maps looking at the location of the magnetic south pole, then I moved back to looking at the north pole, and then I noticed that there was some kind of road between the Greenland towns of Ivittuut and Kangilinnguit which OSM was claiming as some kind of ‘highway 1’; and then I looked at Nuuk through the various OSM modes, and then I wondered ‘what on earth is that?’
And then it was past midnight on a work night.
(Semi-unrelated, but if my work ever offers to send me on an overseas secondment this is now where I’m suggesting ahead of Beijing.)
Preface To The Second Printing
I would be remiss if I did not talk about the perception, on the part of the general public, that the world has changed since the events of September 11,2001. The shift of world events that started on that terrible day, while shocking, was probably not nearly as surprising to the experienced radio monitor. Radio monitoring hobbyists are the most informed people on the planet. They know that the world is always changing, always changing rapidly, often changing in unexpected ways, and, sadly, not always changing for the better. While no one can accurately predict what will happen in the future, people who take the time to “listen to the world” will always have the edge.
— Radio Monitoring: The How-To Guide, by TJ ‘Skip’ Arey
…so what I’m hearing is that shortwave nerds knew 9/11 was coming
As I mentioned Elsewhere
As the time that I’ve used linux primarily grows longer and longer I’m less and less inclined to recommend it to random people - and yet more and more glad that I switched from Windows.
I don’t know what will happen when Windows 10 support ends, but it worries me
You can’t fool me google maps
I know that’s just a screenshot of a Cities Skylines Industries DLC forestry industry building not a real aerial photograph
Zoom/Enhance
Review for a USB hard drive enclosure
Like an empty box (5 Stars)
Appeared to be a bit soulless and empty, like it was not quite complete. Thought I’d bought another suicidal piece of computer hardware but this time rather than counselling I put an older HD from an older desktop inside, and the two appear to have bonded nicely. This is now something a lot of older people want - their current knowledge but in a younger body.
…I did not expect that
I assumed the CD drive on this MacBook was dead but nope, opens this encyclopedia britannica cd I’ve never looked at fine
Tag yourself I’m the accretionary prism
I’m told Macs are cool these days
This (a mid-2010 MacBook, not a Pro or even an Air, just a regular white unibody MacBook, the one with the rubber base that comes off) is an unreasonably good little machine for it’s 13 years. It lasts at least two hours browsing cohost/the web on the couch, runs a modern (and overly flashy) distro out of the box, and is just really nice to use. The only modifications from stock, as far as I’m aware, is the 4GB of ram it was already upgraded to when I bought it on TradeMe, and the cheap SSD I dropped in it. Strongly recommend.
Democracy Time
None of these are going to win (I will never win) but it’s important to do your democratic duty you know?
Am I cool now?
This is running on a 2010 MacBook btw, it’s incredible that this (mostly) Just Works
Intellectually, I know how the US became a place where individual streets and houses can opt in and out of legally being within city limits
But as an outside observer I can still be baffled
Some extras
Say what you like about the Earth, it has good lore
Who needs containers? You’ll take my directly-installed-onto-the-server applications from my cold dead hands
‘crunchy grain from pushed film is cool’ but for digital when?
The thing that would out me as a time traveler/isekai is being afraid of asbestos.
Would I actually be likely to survive into old age in that situation? No. Would I still be afraid of lead piping and those Edwardian electric tablecloths? Absolutely.
(To be fair early home electric stuff would kill you much faster)
“This article is about the practice where a date is given with reference to two calendars. For the practice where two couples sit side by side, see Double date.”